Stop Talking About Meritocracy

In an old piece making the rounds on Twitter, the British sociologist Michael Young, who coined the term “meritocracy”, urges its removal from the public lexicon. Although a lifelong man of the Left, Young sounds remarkably like Charles Murray:

Underpinning my argument [in The Rise of the Meritocracy] was a non-controversial historical analysis of what had been happening to society for more than a century before 1958, and most emphatically since the 1870s, when schooling was made compulsory and competitive entry to the civil service became the rule.

Until that time status was generally ascribed by birth. But irrespective of people’s birth, status has gradually become more achievable.

It is good sense to appoint individual people to jobs on their merit. It is the opposite when those who are judged to have merit of a particular kind harden into a new social class without room in it for others.

Ability of a conventional kind, which used to be distributed between the classes more or less at random, has become much more highly concentrated by the engine of education.

A social revolution has been accomplished by harnessing schools and universities to the task of sieving people according to education’s narrow band of values.

With an amazing battery of certificates and degrees at its disposal, education has put its seal of approval on a minority, and its seal of disapproval on the many who fail to shine from the time they are relegated to the bottom streams at the age of seven or before.

The new class has the means at hand, and largely under its control, by which it reproduces itself.

Young’s diagnosis of pretensions of the modern elite seems unimpeachable to me. As I and others have argued on this site, the current system of educational credentialing has the function of preserving and transmitting privilege, even though it was designed for much the opposite end. The conceptual hinge of this transformation is the ambiguity of the term “merit”. If we’re not careful to specify what we mean by merit, the (strong) instrumental argument for distributing tasks and responsibilities to those best able to fulfill them tend to slips into the (weak) moral argument that the most capable few deserve greater power and wealth.

What’s more, the close association of merit with educational achievement tends to depreciate abilities and dispositions that may be more suited to many positions. Consider what happened when bankers learned to consider themselves the smartest guys in the room.

It’s too late to get rid of meritocracy: both the word and the ideal it represents have been too deeply ingrained in our ethical culture. What we can do is insist that its ambiguities and disadvantages be acknowledged, particularly by those who claim to act in the public interest. As Young’s example indicates, this is a task in which many socialists, libertarians, and traditionalist conservatives can cooperate. As much as we disagree on other matters, we know that meritocracy is a dangerous illusion.

The author makes some very good points about the self perpetuation of the modern ‘meritocratic’ elite. Interesting how this contrasts with the picture of social mobility (upwards and downwards) of imperial China painted by Ron Unz.

1) the imperfection of our “meritocracy.” That is, our system is not really as meritocratic as the winners like to think it is; and

2) If we ever actually did manage to create a perfect meritocracy, it could still be a dystopia. After all, a large portion of this merit of ours is distributed via the genetic lottery. If we somehow magically wiped out all other forms of privilege, that would remain as the sole driving force. I don’t know about ya’ll, but that worries me.

I worry often about #1. But when I come ’round to worrying about #2, I think it scares me more.

The word “meritocracy” is self referential, of primary use to meritocrats. I have only the vaguest notion of what it means. Is Washington DC a meritocratic place? It thinks it is. Is the Presidency occupied by our foremost meritocrat? The President thinks he is. Is the IRS peopled with meritocrats that the meritocracy has commissioned to police the non-meritocratic political precincts of America? They evidently think they are. Meritocracy strikes me as a shiv fashioned in the forges of the Ivy league.

“3. The concept of success leads me to consider so-called meritocracies and their implications. We have been taught that meritocratic institutions and societies are fair. Putting aside the reality that no system, including our own, is really entirely meritocratic, meritocracies may be fairer and more efficient than some alternatives. But fair in an absolute sense? Think about it. A meritocracy is a system in which the people who are the luckiest in their health and genetic endowment; luckiest in terms of family support, encouragement, and, probably, income; luckiest in their educational and career opportunities; and luckiest in so many other ways difficult to enumerate—these are the folks who reap the largest rewards. The only way for even a putative meritocracy to hope to pass ethical muster, to be considered fair, is if those who are the luckiest in all of those respects also have the greatest responsibility to work hard, to contribute to the betterment of the world, and to share their luck with others. As the Gospel of Luke says (and I am sure my rabbi will forgive me for quoting the New Testament in a good cause): “From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded” (Luke 12:48, New Revised Standard Version Bible). Kind of grading on the curve, you might say.”

Ben Bernanke Demolishes Meritocracy and Shows Us All Why We Should Eagerly Await Professor Bernanke’s Return
By Matthew Yglesias

The way I see it, there are only four basic ways a society can be structured. One is a pure dog-eat-dog survival of the strongest/meanest/least principled. Two is the communistic “everyone is equal” — which somehow always seems to come out looking more like Orwell (all are equal, but some are more equal than others). Three is a hereditary feudal/aristocratic structure where your place is determined by who your parents are. Four is a true meritocracy, where everyone starts out with equal opportunity and is able to find the niche they fit most comfortably. For myself, I’ll take number 4, thanks. It may be scary, but it’s the least scary of all of them.

What I have seen is that many of the kids who end up likely to attend the best schools are individuals who have been indulged their entire lives and treated like little princes and princesses by their parents. They’ve been allowed to spend their entire lives just working on their resumes – acquiring skills and awards. They are often not asked to do any work that might be beneath them like working at McDonald’s or a grocery store or other jobs that might require a little humility.

I know one boy who attended Princeton. At the end of the school year his parents would drive up to Princeton (about 800 miles away) to get his belongings and then drive back home with his belongings, while their “little prince” flew home. This was an able-bodied young man who was not asked by his parents to share in the responsibility of hauling his stuff back home from school. It made me a little sick. He is now at a white-glove law firm in New York.

So, those who form the elite are usually(?) very smart and hard-working but – from what I’ve often seen – in ways that glorify themselves. They often are quite consumed with themselves and have had little experience with humility or with having to attend to any of the daily grind type of responsibilities and concerns that others must deal with.

Merit is hard to measure, and harder for outside observers to ascertain on a moment’s notice–so yeah, many aspects of “meritocracy” are bogus. On one hand, it’s probably a good thing that we insist that only those with law degrees (or equivalent educational attainment) and appropriate licensure get to practice law–this is a good example of meritocracy in action. It’s not foolproof–there are certainly bad and unethical lawyers in practice, and probably a few folks that might make good attorneys but can’t pass the bar for whatever reason–but it’s good enough.

It’s not such a good thing that many elite law firms will throw your resume in the trash if you don’t have an Ivy League education.

And the latter–is not mere credentialism; it’s requirement of a pedigree. A law degree from an accredited school is a credential; a law degree from Harvard is also a pedigree, in that it says much about who you are and where you come from, as well as what you’ve accomplished and are capable of.

We need meritocracy. We need the idea, illusory or not, that people with power have in some sense earned that power. It’s at the core of the perception of legitimacy any society needs to survive. If privileges come with being the child of parents who raise you well, then so be it. If you have to start out with disadvantages because your parents weren’t doing all they could, then so be it. But these realities cannot upset the notion that people generally get what they earn, and that the system has allowances for movement and change within its cultural context. Without merit as a moral driver, it’s all helpless unfairness, and no society with individualism at its core will be able to fully accept a condition that basically forces acceptance of helplessness. To completely abandon merit is to condone such a notion. It has to be at least a semi-meritocracy.

Along with a semi-meritocracy needs to come a semi-acceptance or role, place, and destiny. And the definition of merit being predicated on public opinion can’t possibly be sustainable or sensible; we need something deeper than markets and votes. But what else are you going to tell people when their actions bring them pain? How does a society defend itself against the perpetual accusations of injustice and deprivation that create unrest and loathing of the powerless against the powerful? Would you expect the powerful to make a habit of admitting to oppression?

As an Air Force brat, I was raised quite literally all over the country, experiencing the educational systems of every region as well as learning the social and religious classifications of those regions. My marriage ended in divorce when I refused to accede to my husband’s demand that I quit college (he didn’t want me to work either). I raised my two daughters on my own, often without any support or help from my ex, to see them complete college, build successful careers and are happily married. I built a successful, if often painful, career before retiring as a director.

I’m an older boomer who came of age during the women’s movement. Nevertheless, I had to deal with being told I wasn’t good enough for a particular position simply because I was a woman or my opinions and ideas were ignored because of my gender, even though when those same ideas were put forward by my male colleagues, they were praised.

Because of my extensive life experiences, I don’t fall for the current meritocracy argument that we see from from Wall St barons or Corporate CEOs or even from some libertarians. Rising to the top, even when people and kids have the ability, is often difficult, if not impossible. If some outside force or circumstance holds people down, such as in my early experiences, or prevents them from achieving the education they need to succeed or some other cultural force, such as racial or religious preferences, limits opportunities even for exceptionally bright individuals, the meritocracy becomes a sham.

Nevertheless, I believe in a merit based society. The best and brightest should be able to succeed to a greater degree than those who are not exception or gifted or talented or who don’t work (or want to work) as hard. But when society is set up to reward those who come from a wealthy family with greater access to a better education and connections or rewards those of a specific gender or ethnicity or refuses to make equivalent investments for family success into lower income communities, then meritocracy becomes nothing more than another example of class based preferences, a la pre-revolution French nobility.

If we were a truly meritocratic society, every child would receive the same quality education regardless of where they lived, including the same quality meals three times a day/seven days a week, and resources (along with a major change in welfare programs to encourage the continuance 2-parent families) would pour into lower income areas to a greater degree than upper income areas to offset the income disparities. We would make sure that every child started with at least the same level of support. The same floor – expending more dollars to assist those communities with fewer dollars and resources. In addition, if we were truly a meritocratic society, gender, race and ethnicity would have no place – or thought – in decision making.

Being born into a wealthy family or a white family or male really should not define who a person is or what that person deserves in life or define the opportunities to succeed.

Unfortunately, we don’t live in that truly meritocratic society, and perhaps we never will. Biases exist, regardless of the Abrahamic religious teachings we were taught. And that’s what really needs to be addressed.

As I and others have argued on this site, the current system of educational credentialing has the function of preserving and transmitting privilege, even though it was designed for much the opposite end.

^Yu are to be commended for not buying into the current narrative re superior merit arrangements, but on the flip side some would argue, is this credential focus necessarily a bad thing? Many “HBD” types embrace said credentialing and associated IQ sorting, as reflecting the proper genetic distibution of talent and thus reflective of those deserving greater or less rewards. Superior Asian performance for example, or the higher IQ scores of those labeled as “liberal” (Kanazawa 2010) is the proper outcome of this distribution. In this scheme of IQ based merit, conservatives lag behind intellectually.

After all, a large portion of this merit of ours is distributed via the genetic lottery. If we somehow magically wiped out all other forms of privilege, that would remain as the sole driving force. I don’t know about ya’ll, but that worries me.

^^Is it really though? How much of SAT scores is due to genetic lottery versus good test prep cram classes? And are things such as the SAT really a reflection of “merit”?

I agree that “meritocracy” is defined too much in terms of what school(s) you attended. I’m currently engaged in a vigorous discussion with some of my fellow adjunct instructors about the future of our jobs. At the technical college where I teach, the majority of my students make very slow progress, in large measure because they have full-time jobs (or a combination of two or three jobs). Likewise, many adjuncts have to divide our time between more than one teaching position. Having thus to divide time and attention between two masters is a serious barrier to rising to the top.

Re-reading my post, I suppose I should’ve started with “I agree with Brian” because I do. I just worry, is all. It’s in my nature.

Is it really though? How much of SAT scores is due to genetic lottery versus good test prep cram classes? And are things such as the SAT really a reflection of “merit”?

Well, that’s what I meant when I said “if we magically wiped out all other privilege.” We’re not going to do that – because it’s impossible to get rid of the impact of the “nurture” side of things (nor should we try to go so far!). But if we actually could, what really remains but nature? Predestination, basically.

I am almost certainly jumping at shadows, because we’re not going to get there. But if we attain the illusion of it (by making our present system more believably meritocratic), I could see even more smug satisfaction in the elite, combined with even greater entrenchment of said elite. Yuck.

As for what the SAT measures: I’d say it’s a decent proxy for the mental abilities & skills that correlate reasonably well with success in an advanced industrial (or post-industrial) society. Put another way: the SAT is the worst test, except for all the others…

I want to respond to the comment that “we must not have a true meritocracy, because our institutions aren’t working that well.” That assumes that true meritocracy results in major American institutions running efficiently and working in favor of the common good. This is a very widespread American assumption but exactly what Michael Young was warning against.

First of all, an insulated group of elites may make mistakes in terms of creating policy for the masses because they have little experience dealing with non-elites. Being around only privileged, ambitious, and highly intelligent people gives you a distorted picture of human nature.

Second, elites may think they are so smart they don’t have to play by the traditional rules – leading to the very complex but overly risky investments such as derivatives that brought down Wall Street.

Finally, to rehash Christopher Lasch, meritocracy sucks up all of the talent from the masses into its own institutions. It makes sure every genius gets put into the Ivy League conformity factory, which ensures that no populist leaders emerge who are a real threat to elite power.

The trouble with meritocracy as we know it, is that it is not scholarship, but leadership that merits the privilege of affluence in society. Leadership is not difficult to assess, we have only to count a citizen’s dedicated employees.

Rather than grading children, the schools of a meritocracy would be concerned with providing every child with the same comprehensive moral reasoning skill set and equal access to inspiring lessons in the arts and sciences, to be enjoyed at their leisure. In the absence of a credentialed elite, it would be those citizens who successfully employ their fellow citizens that are worthy of exceptional affluence. A meritocratic distribution of power could be accomplished with an individual income tax code, such as: income x .000001 x income divided by number of dedicated employees = $ debt to state.